#i need to write that nmj and xxc meta | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fincalinde · 1 year

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how do you feel about yi city? i don't really go there but i know i've read some meta about how it's like 3zuns and a lot of people compare jgy and xy and was wondering what you thought.

I don't go there either and writing a post deconstructing the idea that there are parallels between Yi City and 3zun could get messy, but I'll make an attempt. Here goes, this got quite long.

As far as I'm aware, fandom when it conflates Yi City and 3zun draws parallels roughly thus:

JGY = XY

LXC = XXC

NMJ = SL

Well there sure are three guys in each group! I mean actually Yi City has four key characters but AQ is a girl and who cares about those right? Right? Fandom, as always I am regarding you disapprovingly over my lorgnette.

Character parallels (or a lack thereof)

XY is hyperviolent and takes excessive revenge for the smallest of slights and takes pleasure in extreme violence and cruelty. JGY endures an onslaught of slights with smiling forbearance, and while he commits acts of extreme violence always does so under duress or in service of a larger goal (though he can certainly enjoy it to a degree). He even outlines his personal philosophy to XY in Villainous Friends, which XY not only rejects but doesn't even fully comprehend.

XXC is an idealist with limited experience of the depths of human cruelty, vulnerable to being preyed on by bad faith actors exploiting said ideals, and when those ideals are shattered he is unable to endure it. LXC's entire deal is that he has a clear understanding of the gap between ideals and reality; witness, he is the one constantly pointing out how few options JGY has and how that informs his actions.

SL is a man of upright morals who wants to break from traditional clan-based practices. When he loses his temper with XXC in a highly emotional context, he subsequently feels deep shame and tries to find him to make amends. NMJ is a moral stickler, but hypocritical and obsessed with the blood-based legacy of his clan. He flies into regular rages which over time escalate to become more and more murderous; he never attempts to make amends for anything he has done during said rages.

Narrative parallels (or a lack thereof)

Again from what I can tell, a proportion of fandom seems to have decided that JGY is some kind of XY lite, hiding behind LXC's skirts and making a diabolical neko face as NMJ points out how evil he is and LXC blithely ignores it. This is then being conflated with XXC being tricked by XY and SL being the one whose arrival at Yi City blows up the status quo.

Except this isn't really accurate to either group.

LXC and NMJ are not partners in ideals or ambition. They each have very different ways of seeing the world and are each responsible for their own clans. They're good friends, but we know that LXC's motivation for suggesting the sworn brotherhood is to improve relations between NMJ and JGY i.e. to protect JGY from NMJ's wrath, and we know NMJ's motive is to regain authority over JGY. There's no indication that they would have entered into a sworn brotherhood with each other if JGY hadn't been present. They're good friends but they're just not a matched pair like XXC and SL.

JGY does not intrude on some cosy scenario and cuckoo his way into LXC's life by means of deception. He saves LXC's life, protects him, gives him the funds to rebuild his clan, and is upfront about who he is and what his parentage is from the beginning. Obviously he keeps secrets from LXC, but he doesn't enter LXC's life under false pretences. I presume people think JGY's use of Turmoil can be compared to XY's use of corpse powder, but there is an ocean of difference between using your friend's house key to steal a piece of paper you need in order to take out your mutual friend who has repeatedly and recently literally tried to kill you and ... literally tricking your friend into murdering a bunch of innocent villagers and laughing about it.

LXC knows a high percentage of what JGY has done and isn't defending him due to ignorance of his actions but due to a sincere belief in their necessity and/or an understanding that JGY's options are limited and he is doing the best he can in the circumstances. This attitude continues in the temple, when he refuses to turn aside from questioning JGY in an effort to reconcile JGY's additional secrets with the man he knows. Meanwhile, during the confrontation between XXC and XY, XXC is steadfast in his rejection of XY's thesis statement and when he succumbs it is to despair rather than to XY's justifications.

Rather than being oblivious to the danger JGY poses, LXC is not fully confronting the fact that NMJ is incredibly dangerous and an ongoing threat to JGY's life; and, for that matter, the lives of others too. Remember NMJ cut down plenty of his own cultivators under his qi deviation, and said qi deviation was merely accelerated rather than created by JGY's playing of Turmoil. SL is no danger to anyone and continues to selflessly travel and do good where he can. He takes ownership of his mistakes and commits to doing penance in the hope that he can ultimately make amends.

It really cannot be overstated how dangerous NMJ is both to JGY and everyone around him. He's a ticking time bomb and that is not remotely comparable to SL, a genuinely upright man who makes a huge mistake and in trying to put it right stumbles into a twisted situation and gets horribly murdered. SL isn't obsessed with the potential for destruction exhibited by a man who is doing his best to navigate an impossible situation because he has to follow his father's awful instructions or be eliminated; he's trying to stop the man who massacred his temple, maimed him, and used his own best friend as a murder weapon for the fun of it.

It's not that XY doesn't have affection for XXC; he clearly does love him in his own way, and XXC is the shizun cum father cum big brother he never had. It's notable that XY stops with the corpse powder after a while and settles into his domestic life with XXC and AQ (remember her). But he very obviously has no understanding of XXC's moral framework, and it's not that he learned better so much as he no longer has a desire to revenge himself on XXC and can't quite bring himself to examine that.

Miscellaneous dynamics (oh no, I'm going to talk about pairings)

Guys, A-Qing is there. She is there, like, she is super there, she is our viewpoint character, she is not some optional add-on. She's crucial to the entire dynamic and whenever I have dipped a toe in Yi City I'm usually frustrated to see that the miraculous plot change that has spared XXC has omitted to spare AQ. Or, if she is spared, she gets relegated to daughter or little sister status while XY is elevated to being one corner of the Songxuexiao triad.

So let's talk about pairings. Here is my position, which I must stress is based on MDZS not CQL.

If there is any significant potential for a romantic read on the relationships between any of these characters, it's solely between XXC and SL. They are completely committed to each other, love each other deeply, and are each the most important person in the other's life. SL is committed to finding XXC to right the wrong he did him, and XXC is so committed to SL that when he thinks he's to blame for the death of SL's surrogate family he literally gifts him his own eyes.

The dynamic between XXC and XY is really more of a familial or mentorly one. XXC is providing guidance and support that XY has never received in his life, and XY is responding as a child experiencing actual care for the first time. He's still not capable of understanding or accepting that his past actions are wrong, but, like a child, he thinks he can sweep them under the rug and go on as though they never happened. It's not that he's learnt better; it's that he doesn't need to commit mass violence any more.

But even if you could make a successful argument for XY's feelings being romantic, and even if you could successfully argue that XXC returns them (a massive stretch), whatever kind of relationship they have is fundamentally unworkable and doomed. Sooner or later, even in a scenario where SL survives, XXC will discover the truth and reject XY utterly. In their final confrontation he is hurt, appalled, trying to understand... but he's not trying to understand so he can find his way back to the XY he thought he knew. He's trying to understand in the way a shell-shocked soldier is trying to understand. He shows no openness to XY's explanations and no indication whatsoever that any reconciliation is possible.

XY doesn't understand this at first, but when he does realise it—that's the moment he reveals the presence of SL's fierce corpse. The moment of no return is years in their past, but XY only grasps this when XXC refuses to accept or engage with the narrative he's created in his own mind about how justified his actions are.

It's very telling that, when XXC is being slammed with revelations, the moment that finally breaks him is when he finds out that SL is dead by his own hand. And, to loop back round to dismantling false parallels between Yi City and 3zun, this should really be compared to LXC's reaction to his minor role in NMJ's death. He's appalled in the moment, but it doesn't even come up during the temple discussions and he's constantly seeking explanations and accepting the logic of many of JGY's responses.

#ask #testblog-54 #roquen meta #outing myself as a sl fan #i'm sorry sl #for all the ryvita jokes i made about you and xxc in the past #ur actually my fave #if writing unpaid fanfic were my full time job #i'd have written that postcanon sl fic i want to do #alas there are not enough hours in the day #once again i write meta for mdzs NOT cql #yi city is something where the dynamics differ significantly between novel and adaptation #still no support for the common fandom conflation of yc and 3z in cql though

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robininthelabyrinth · 4 years

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Howdy! Your writing rocks! If you don’t mind, could I ask you what you think would change if Jin Guangyao had given the regard he has for Lan Xichen to Jiang Cheng instead? Do you think there’d be huge changes or little ones? This isn’t a prompt, I think your meta is super cool. Obvs if you don’t wanna answer, there’s no pressure or anything.

So this is going to be more of an insight into the rambling way I develop stories than anything else, but basically these are my (very long) thoughts:

First step: the question is not “if”. The question is “how”. How does JGY come to have a regard for JC instead of LXC?

Let us posit that JGY meets (and becomes devoted to) LXC after he’s been thrown down from Koi Tower - rescuing him after the burning of the Cloud Recesses, which presumably happened while on his way to Qinghe or after he’s arrived (or, in the Untamed, when he’s working at Qinghe already).

So, let’s take that as our starting point: JGY doesn’t go to Qinghe.

He goes to Yunmeng instead, probably taking a boat to get there. Regardless of when he arrives, this doesn’t really go anywhere until after the Lotus Pier is burned, after everything that happens between WWX and JC happens, and now JC is raising an army and madly recruiting for the Jiang Sect. Meng Yao shows up with a smile and a “I’m from Yunping, just down the river, I want to help here” spiel, and he’s good - he’s efficient and smart and good with people, all the characteristics that made NMJ appreciate him, and JC needs good people so badly. Especially in the beginning, when he’s alone, with WWX missing.

But here’s the difference between NMJ and JC: JC needs people. He’s not a natural leader, having been dragged into trouble by WWX his whole life, and he’s brand new at being a sect leader; he doesn’t have established likes or dislikes, he has no idea what he’s doing. He’s going to rely on Meng Yao, he’s going to depend on Meng Yao - Meng Yao says jump and JC says “good idea, how high?” and he doesn’t even notice he’s doing it. Meng Yao is all but running the sect, and he doesn’t even have to try. No prostitutes’ tricks here, no smiles, no empty flattery - most of the subtle stuff goes straight over JC’s head, but a vaguely kind word every once in a while and JC will turn bright red and look pleased as punch for the next hour. That type of power is seductive.

And then WWX shows up.

As much as I love WWX, his dynamics with JC are not the best. WWX does whatever he wants and expects JC to follow, because he always has, and JC always does - how irritating that would be to Meng Yao, who up until this point has been put into the position of big brother for the first time in his life, and who now has to tip-toe around the ticking time bomb that is Yiling Patriarch!WWX to get what he wants. Plus, Meng Yao is good with people: he doesn’t need to know all the gossip about the Jiang family (though he does) to be able to figure out that, legitimate birth or not, JC has spent his entire life being treated like the sect leader’s dissatisfying bastard son - and oh, that hits Meng Yao in the one soft spot he has left, the spot that’s almost but not entirely narcissism, the one that LXC got into by being nice and kind and treating him like an equal, the one NHS, soft and dependent, got into by being sad and pathetic, and which JC, prickly and mean, gets in by virtue of being like Meng Yao.

He doesn’t do anything about that dislike, though; JC loves WWX, and the war effort needs him, so he’ll put up with him...for now. After a while, he goes to Langya - no need to have an accidentally-not-accidentally overheard conversation here! He just says “my father” and JC is like “I totally get it, go”. And when JC finds him killing that supervisor and Meng Yao says “he deserved it”, JC believes him, because JC is ride-or-die until you force him off the ride. He’s gullible and trusting, even though he thinks he’s cynical, and he’s about as susceptible to Meng Yao’s bullshit as LXC is (as we see in canon!)

So Meng Yao goes to be a spy and (because he doesn’t know LXC in this) he sends the info to JC, who sends the info to LXC (the courier), who gets it to NMJ, and all that stuff happens about the same way. Except NMJ has no reason to know that Meng Yao is a conniving bastard that uses friendly fire to settle debts, so when Meng Yao says “I had no choice but to kill them”, NMJ is upset but has no reason to doubt it. And now you have NMJ owing Meng Yao a favor, however grudgingly.

No sworn brothers, though, not with LXC to suggest it and without NMJ wanting to put Meng Yao on the right track, and JC is pretty sensitive about family stuff so best not to even suggest it. It’s fine, Meng Yao - now JGY - doesn’t need it. Just like he doesn’t need to do all that much to get JZX killed, just a suggestion here, a little trouble there, a bit of blackening of WWX’s name that’s really mostly his own fault for being so arrogant: it’s regrettable that he has to ruin Jiang Yanli’s marriage by getting JZX killed (sad, but necessary if he’s going to be sect leader), but she was never supposed to die. He even waited until she had a son and heir so that she wouldn’t be alone! He’s very nice, isn’t he?

(And if WWX dying and Jiang Yanli dying means that JC is all his, with no one else in the world to interfere, well, that’s all the better, isn’t it? No one can take care of JC as well as he can.)

The Xue Yang situation is easy to resolve, too. NMJ has no “in” to Koi Tower, not without a relationship with JGY, and this pushes the two sects onto the brink of war - and that’d be no good at all, especially with JC grieving the way he is, all alone and desperate. Plus, JC has father issues, and that’s a little infectious; JGY is looking at JGS through the lens of JFM and it’s a lot less idealistic. So let’s say for all these reasons JGY moves up his plans and kills JGS earlier, and the second he takes over he vows that XY will be killed...except, alas, XY must have gotten wind and fled, because he’s gone. Awkward, huh? Definitely not JGY’s fault, though. Who are you going to believe is responsible for all that gross stuff, NMJ, the dead pervert or the guy who saved your life?

And then JGY is Sect Leader Jin and he and JC can raise little Jin Ling together, and maybe even Jin Rusong (although if he kills JGS early there’s a possibility that he wouldn’t need to shore up power in the Jin sect by marrying QS, or at least wouldn’t feel like he has to get her pregnant before the marriage, though of course there’s also no reason he wouldn’t do it anyway). Now what?

The Watchtowers, of course. Except in this world, NMJ is alive and well (no sworn brothers, no Song of Clarity here - except the legitimate one from LXC) and we know JGY knows how to put on the face NMJ most likes to see. So with JC in his pocket and NMJ fond of him, and LXC as nice and friendly as always, the sects live in wonderful harmony. In large part because JGY doesn’t need to murder quite so many of them.

(and then over in Yi City, someone sacrifices their body to bring back the Yiling Patriarch because he’s their last hope to bring XXC back, either Song Lan or Xue Yang, and suddenly WWX is back - WWX who JC loves and hates in equal measure, WWX who’s a little too good at figuring out cause-and-effect - and JGY....JGY doesn’t like that. He doesn’t like that at all.)

#jiang cheng #meng yao #jin guangyao #mdzs #mdzs meta #my fic #my fics #I guess #not really a fic #more of an outline #because there was a boat #Anonymous

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